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Happiness Quotes

Most happiness quotes online are cheerful. The sourced ones on this page often are not. Bertrand Russell wrote in Sceptical Essays (1928) that after enjoying ourselves, our greatest pleasure is preventing others from enjoying themselves. Macaulay’s History of England (1849) has the Puritan who hated bear-baiting not because it hurt the bear but because it pleased the spectators. Tom Robbins gave the most practical advice in a 2002 interview: the key to self-generated happiness is refusing to take yourself too seriously.

“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive” is credited to Marcus Aurelius and flagged as misattributed. “No man is happy who does not think himself so” is credited to Publilius Syrus and marked disputed.

Random quote on Happiness

Most quoted on happiness:

Happiness! Can any human being undertake to define it for another?

Dinah Craik A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)

Place before thyself the ideal of perfection, not that of happiness, for by doing what makes thee wiser and better, thou shalt find the peace and joy in which happiness consists.

John Lancaster Spalding Aphorisms and Reflections (1901)

The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.

Bertrand Russell

To have been happy, madame, adds to calamity.

Beaumont and Fletcher

To frown at pleasure, and to smile in pain.

Edward Young Night-Thoughts (1742)

A sound mind in a sound body, is a short but full description of a happy state in this world.

John Locke Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1693)

Happiness is a good flow of life.

Zeno of Citium

In the beginning the body causes difficulties because it claims its rights without realizing that it is cutting off its own head by not surrendering.

Teresa of Ávila

Anguish and grief, like darkness and rain, may be depicted; but gladness and joy, like the rainbow, defy the skill of pen or pencil.

Frederick Douglass My Escape from Slavery (1881)

The soul of the world is nourished by people's happiness.

Paulo Coelho The Alchemist (1988)

No man can live a happy life, or even a supportable life, without the study of wisdom.

Seneca the Younger

We call “happiness” a certain set of circumstances that makes joy possible. But we call joy that state of mind and emotions that needs nothing to feel happy.

André Gide Pretexts: Reflections on Literature and Morality (1964)

It is not the smallest use to try to make people good, unless you try at the same time — and they feel that you are trying — to make them happy. And you rarely can make another happy, unless you are happy yourself.

Dinah Craik A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858)

Joy to the world! the Saviour reigns;
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains
Repeat the sounding joy.

Isaac Watts Psalm 98 "Joy to the World! (1719)

Happiness is not the end of duty, it is a constituent of it. It is in it and of it; not an equivalent, but an element.

Henry Giles Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895)

The greatest happiness of the greatest number.

Cesare Beccaria

Of all the means which wisdom acquires to ensure happiness throughout the whole of life, by far the most important is friendship. (28)

Epicurus

I built my soul a lordly pleasure-house,
Wherein at ease for aye to dwell.
I said, "O Soul, make merry and carouse,
Dear soul, for all is well."

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

So long as you do not quarrel with sin, you will never be a truly happy man.

J. C. Ryle Home Truths (1859)

We're charm'd with distant views of happiness,
But near approaches make the prospect less.

Thomas Yalden

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